Wanderer
by Kelouisa
Summary: After the Fall, John joined Doctors Without Borders. Far from London, he's stopped hearing Sherlock's voice and seeing him around every corner, until one evening, a new driver, Sigerson brings the supplies to Dr. Watson's little clinic. M/M Slash, Adult content.
1. Chapter 1

God knows John Watson has had more than his fair share of shite heaped upon him, but after his injury, he'd found new life with Sherlock Holmes. After Sherlock's death, he'd struggled until he found his place in Doctors Without Borders. Two years in, now, he had no plan, no other ideas, but hopefully he wouldn't have to think about that for a while. He was here until they didn't want him anymore. Here his limp didn't return and his intermittent tremor had all but disappeared. He was happy here. They needed him. Needed him to patch up bodies, go out on risky ambulance runs, even beat the generator into submission on occasion. They needed his dumb jokes and quick thinking and genial smile.

He'd been on several missions, taking him back to Afghanistan, on to Turkey, and now here, a war-torn little hamlet in the middle of nowhere that saw too many children with gunshot wounds, malaria, and TB. John had settled in here for the long haul, picking up some of the local language, making friends with his coworkers, and learning as much as he could about the local militias. London now seemed a foreign land to him, two years distant except for brief visits between missions to his sister Harry.

Doctor John Watson perched on the wooden clinic steps one evening with a rather sorry excuse for a beer in his hand. It was his last beer until the next supply delivery, warm and a bit flat, though the locals here sold a rather harsh liquor, if he was desperate. He was not.

John heard the supply truck's rumble long before he saw it through the trees. He waved it along as it backed up near the clinic steps, making unloading easier. A shout into the clinic brought a few colleagues to assist and John shot back the last of his beer before setting the empty bottle on the ground and out of the way.

The driver turned off the engine as all hands started moving and cataloguing the supplies. Several exclamations were made over crates of longed-for medicines that had disappeared en route from the previous few trucks. John managed to haul a few boxes into the clinic before pulling a crate of saline bottles across the tail gate and almost letting them crash into the ground.

The driver had come around and was leaning indolently against the side of the truck, lit cigarette in his lips. His profile displayed a long nose and high cheekbones; he was tall and lanky, long-limbed and long-fingered as he plucked the cigarette away from well-defined Cupid's bow lips. John's whole being stuttered as he caught a sideways glimpse of the man, just a flash. His mind's eye supplied the Belstaf coat with its collar turned up and the messy black curls.

John caught himself, pushed the saline crate back onto the truck, and sat down on the tailgate to collect himself. If any of his colleagues wondered what he was doing taking a break while they unloaded the truck, they didn't say anything. After a few deep breaths, convincing himself he could not have seen who he thought he saw, John Watson got up to face the driver.

With those calming breaths, John could see the differences, see how this man could not be Sherlock, his Sherlock. The driver's hair was cut short that only the barest bit of unruliness was evident; it was also a dull ginger hue. The man's skin was ruddier, dotted with freckles; clearly this man was a friend to the sun for it had made its mark generously. Rugged cargo pants replaced fine, pressed slacks; military-style boots replaced expensive Savile Row shoes; a simple dusty t-shirt replaced purple silk. Still, when John stood close to him, looked up at him, the _feeling_ of looking up at Sherlock Holmes was strong.

"Greetings," the driver said when John approached him. John put on a tight grin and held out his hand. The driver had a strong grip.

"Doctor John Watson."

"Stian Sigerson. Everyone calls me Sig."

The voice, John could almost hear Sherlock in the voice, too, but the driver, this Sigerson, had a more nasal accent. It took a bit more conversation for John to place it, though Norwegian seemed a strong likelihood.

"So, you taking over this route, Sig?"

"No, no, just doing a favor for a friend."

"Some favor."

The road between the clinic and the nearest airfield where the MSF landed supplies was fraught with land mines, snipers, and desperate people.

The bow-shaped lips drew up in a smile but he did not answer.

"Watson," his head of the mission called, "Since you're done for the day, show Sigerson here to the canteen and find him an empty bunk for the night. He can't drive back until morning."

"Not a problem, sir," John answered. _Not a problem, not a problem, Jesus_.

"Anywhere to get a drink around here?" Sigerson, called Sig, had asked. John took him to the canteen and they shared a couple of the beers John ordered and Sig had delivered. Still on the warm side, but better than John's last. They shared dinner, too, though Sig eyed what passed for local cuisine suspiciously before digging in.

Sig turned out to be surprisingly good company. He'd been most recently to Tibet, but Tokyo before that, and Moscow before that. He had stories of the corrupt officials he'd met, the lamas, the monks and vicious criminals. He rested his long arm on the table near John's as he spoke, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles.

John found himself laughing and telling tales as well, stories he had not spoken of in more than two years. When he heard Sig chuckling along with him, though, he froze, for the sound brought him back those two years and more.

John took a sip of his beer, though it was suddenly difficult to swallow. He glanced up over at Sig, who was lounging in his chair, watching him.

"You were reminded, just then, of something painful."

"No, not exactly." The memory of giggling with a naked Sherlock in Buckingham Palace wasn't painful, not this distant. It was a little twinge, a little heart-breaking. "Just, you remind me of a friend who passed."

"I'm sorry, John."

There that ache was again, when Sig said his name. Just that one word lacked the Norwegian accent so prevalent in his other words. Just that one word and John was taken back to Sherlock speaking to him in 221B Baker Street, back to the London streets where Sherlock would call back over his shoulder, "Do hurry, John!"

Once John had left London, he stopped hearing that voice, seeing that shadow around every corner. It caused both relief and loneliness.

"I could be your friend, John, for tonight."

John blinked. Surely he wasn't…

But he was. Sig's long fingers stroked over John's wrist, pressing so lightly the way Sherlock's did when he surreptitiously monitored someone's heart rate. John's pulse suddenly thundered through his veins, throbbing under those dexterous fingertips.

And those eyes, Sig's eyes speared John, leaving him unable to speak. Those eyes, those unusual sharp gray eyes, London fog eyes, bore into John's heart and saw everything. Saw how much John wanted those lips crushing against his. Thin fingers tightened on John's wrist as Sig leaned forward over the small table and kissed him.

Sig tasted faintly of tobacco and beer, but mostly of warmth and comfort. His free hand wrapped around the back of John's neck, holding him steady. John had no impulse to pull away, though, no doubts or second thoughts. His head was swirling and his heart was thumping and Sig's tongue was in his mouth doing unspeakably glorious things.

When Sig pulled back, he said in a low voice, "I believe you were to show me to a bunk? Shall we retire?"

"Oh, God, yes."

John brought Sig to his room, little more than a narrow bed and a footlocker enclosed by plywood, but it was reasonably private when the occupants of the other rooms were on duty overnight. John stripped off his shirt as soon as he walked into the room and Sig sat on the bed to unlace his boots.

He stalled momentarily after kicking off his own shoes. Condoms, did he have condoms in here? When was the last time he..?

Sig stood up, barefoot, cargo pants drooping low on his waist, and stretched up as he removed his own shirt. John gaped as the vision swept closer to him, the vision of Sig, all real, too true, with the ghost of Sherlock bursting in and out of focus over him.

"Reach in my pocket, John." That voice, like honey in his ear as Sig stepped close, so close, a pleased smirk on his lips. John moved his hand into Sig's left front pocket, though he hadn't specified. That was where Sherlock had kept his magnifier, something he made John reach for unnecessarily time and again. Instead of the plastic lens, a few crinkly packets greeted his curious fingers and he drew them out. A few condoms and a couple packets of lube.

"Always be prepared for every eventuality." Sig's lips met John's again, soft, teasing. Fingertips lingered on John's shoulder, John's scar, as if he knew where it was. _Of course, he knew, he could see it, the lamp is on, it's not every day you see a gunshot scar, he's curious._

Needful, John's fingers worked at the flies of Sig's cargo pants, pushed them down. He more carefully pulled the elastic of Sig's boxers over his hardening cock and Sig pulled back and kicked his ankles free of the material.

"Now yours." Sig stretched out on John's narrow bed, his long limbs dangling over all the edges and his head denting in John's pillow. John couldn't stop looking at Sig and seeing Sherlock imposed there. He felt both elated and like he was dying.

"Perfect, you're perfect," John breathed. If Sig took it as a compliment, fantastic, but what John really meant is that the body bared in front of him was everything he'd imagined Sherlock's body to be. He'd seen enough of it when Sherlock swaggered around the flat in nothing but a sheet or an untied dressing gown, but never flushed with arousal, never lounging in such graphic invitation on John's bed.

John hurried with his own trousers and pants and soon lay hip-to-hip with the ethereal being in his bed.

Sig's slim fingers trailed languidly over John's stomach, up to his chest, and down again. John wondered if those fingers were calloused from violin strings like Sherlock's. John's eyes trailed over the bare chest in front of him, the narrow waist, the lean thighs, trying to remember if the faint scars he saw were ones he'd stitched up in the kitchen at 221B Baker Street. One scar was more recent, across the bottom of Sig's ribcage; small puncture scars from rough, unpracticed stitches dotted either side of the thick pink line. John traced this with his tongue.

Then they were kissing again, tongues sparring, mouths breaking away long enough to breathe in or exhale a low moan. Sig's fingers discovered sensitive spots on John's body he wasn't aware he had. John realized he'd been stiff since the canteen, since those fingers on his wrist, but now he was so achingly aroused by the touch of this man, the press of this stranger's body against his, he had to be touched _now_.

It was enough, for the moment, to thrust his hips closer to Sig's, to rut into his hot, hard flesh. Sig pulled his head back with a breathy gasp, then moved down to mark John's neck. John found both his shoulders flat against the bed and Sig's weight pinning him. Fingers, lips and teeth made their way down John's body. His mouth was free to breath but he couldn't get enough air.

Once a firm hand curled around his cock, John nearly lost control. He stilled the stroking motion, squeezing the hand around him just a little harder.

"Wait. I want…" His free hand scrabbled to where he'd dropped the condoms and lube. He tore open one of the packets and handed the rolled up condom to Sig. When he moved to roll the condom onto John's cock, he stopped him.

"On you."

"Have you bottomed before?" That sultry voice was low and husky and had little of the musical Norwegian notes left.

"Go slow. It's fine." John wasn't sure if it would be, but he needed to be possessed, to take in this spectre. He handed over a second packet, the lube this time, and Sig moved to recapture John's lips with his. When he pulled back, condom rolled securely down the slight curve of his cock, he repositioned John's legs, one knee up, the other leg pressed between Sig's own thighs. He applied a bit of lube to his finger and began to open John up.

John wasn't allowed one bit of worry. Sig's fingers teased and probed while his other hand stroked slickly up and down John's erection, never letting it flag. The first finger inserted felt strange and cold; minutes later, the second felt hot and invasive; the feel of the third pressing inside made John grasping and needy.

"Fuck me. Please, Sig, I'm ready."

John groaned as the hands disappeared from his body. Sig made quick work of emptying the lube packet onto the outside of the condom before rearranging John's body again.

"Like this?"

They were face-to-face and John could look up into those stormy eyes. After a little shifting, Sig was pressed at his entrance and John's legs were wrapped around Sig's ribs.

"Oh, yes," John groaned.

Sig shifted his hips, ever so slowly breaching John's arse. John arched his neck, baring it for a bite. Sig obeyed, once fully seated, giving John a love bite to match the one already purpling on the other side.

"Move," John gritted out, grasping that striking face and pulling it to his for another kiss.

Each gentle thrust made John feel so utterly desperate. He couldn't control his whimpers and groans. His eyes whited out more than once as Sig found just the right angle to hit his prostate.

John closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to look at Sherlock's face above him, flushed with passion and exertion. He couldn't bear it because it _wasn't_ Sherlock, it was Sig. What was his name? Stian Sigerson. God, he felt wonderful, but it wasn't Sherlock, it should have been Sherlock. They should be in their flat on Baker Street; they should be running through London; they should be giggling at crime scenes and annoying DI Lestrade. It should be Sherlock's voice panting, "John," in the middle of the night.

"Fist your cock. I want to feel you squeeze me when you come." John obeyed the command automatically, hearing it in Sherlock's voice and knowing that the man always got his way. His cock was still slick from Sig's lubed fingers and it wasn't going to take much more stroking for him to erupt all over his stomach.

Sig's thrusts came harder, faster, the rhythm more erratic. "Come for me, John." He rebalanced himself on one hand, reaching the other between them and circling John's hand with his own. "Let yourself go."

That husky voice, so like Sherlock's sleepy drawl, those long fingers wrapping around John's hand and pulling on John's cock with him, that maddening friction deep inside thrust John over the edge with so much force his brain shorted out. A brilliant word exploded in his mind, "Sherlock!" and he wasn't ever sure if he said it or not.

Sig only groaned one word in response, "Jawn!" as he gave a few stuttered thrusts through John's climax, groaning at the new tightness. He shuddered, slowed to a stop, stilled.

After a few quiet seconds, Sig chuckled.

"John, you have to let go." The accent was back. John wasn't sure if it had truly gone or if he'd just ceased hearing it.

"God, sorry." John let his legs relax a bit, unclench from around Sig's body. A few awkward movements had Sig pulling out from John and disposing of the tied-off condom over the side of the bed. They shifted again, carefully, and stretched out close beside each other.

Sig reached to the floor, grabbed a t-shirt, John wasn't sure whose, and wiped John's stomach clean before finding a dry corner and wiping down himself. He rolled back into John, tightly pressed together to keep either of them from rolling off the narrow bed.

"That was amazing."

Sig gave a chuckle through his rough breathing and nuzzled John's neck, licking gently.

"I can find another bed…"

"No, stay. Please." John wrapped his arms around Sig even though they were both still hot and sweaty. In a few, he would find the sheet and cover them, but for now it was enough to just to have the man in his arms and enjoy the utterly obliterating confusion of chemicals rush through his brain. Sig's lips found his, kissed him softly over and over. John felt something like arousal, longing, in the pit of his stomach, a pleasurable ache.

The kisses grew lazier and eventually Sig laid his head back and just watched John, tracing his fingers over John's face, the lines by his eyes, the rough stubble on his jaw. They ended up drifting off without even the sheet to cover them.

When John woke in the morning, it was to see Sig's lean back as he sat on the edge of the bed lacing his boots. He must have been up for a few minutes at least because his cargo pants were fastened and he was wearing John's t-shirt from the day before.

"You don't mind, do you? Can't wear mine," he said when he noticed John was awake.

"Keep it. Better yet, take it back off and stay a while longer."

"Got a plane to catch, John. But it's been memorable."

Sig leaned down and kissed John quite thoroughly. John kissed back enthusiastically, almost sure Sig could be convinced, but Sig pulled away with a tender smile.

"Will I see you again?"

Sig's fingertips traced John's lips.

"Do you believe in me, John?"

"God, yes."

"Then I'll find you."

The next time a delivery was due, John waited for it impatiently. His coworkers noticed, and in their close living quarters, they had noticed what had happened the last time the truck made a delivery. There was almost no way that Stian Sigerson would be the driver this time. He'd promised he wouldn't be, even. But John couldn't help feeling sick with desire that Sig would be here, _that Sherlock would be here_.

He wasn't, of course. Their normal driver greeted them with a familiar bellow and John's heart sank just a little. But then the driver began talking.

"Turns out one of the secretaries at the office was selling off some of the medicines. Never would have suspected her, but this Sig fellow comes around a few weeks ago and after a few minutes of looking around the warehouse, spits out a whole slew of details and has the woman confessing in minutes. Anyway, the director offers him a reward, a favor, anything, y'know, to thank him. All he wanted was to make the next delivery. Who asks for dangerous work as payment for a job?"

John's knees go weak for a second, but he manages to make it to the wooden clinic steps before he collapses.

_Sherlock._


	2. Chapter 2

The letter, barely a note, really, arrived with the truck. John had finally stopped jumping up every time the truck delivered supplies. It was foolish and, though the others didn't tease, somewhat embarrassing. But he'd always jumped up for Sherlock, didn't he? Only Sherlock was gone and left in his wake was Holmes-induced neurosis.

One of the nurses, the pretty one with a bouncy ponytail and a young and un-jaded attitude despite her experience, handed him the envelope. John might have tried for her once, when he was ten years younger, back before his injury and discharge, back when he was a flirtatious army surgeon. And of course, long before Sherlock.

Not that she'd look at him quite that way, anyway. Not since Sig.

John smiled as she handed him the unexpected mail. "Ta, Megs."

The postmark was from London, more than two weeks ago. _Harry,_ he thought immediately, though he tossed that thought aside just as quickly. Harry might respond to his calls when he was back in London, but she'd never gone out of her way to contact him out here. Not to mention, written correspondence was hardly her style. Mrs. Hudson, perhaps, though his name on the envelope didn't appear to be her elegant, old-fashioned penmanship. No return address, just _John Watson_ in typed, capital letters, and his direction.

John slipped a fingertip under the edge of the flap and broke the envelope open.

He drew out a single slip of paper, cut to precisely the size of the interior of the envelope. John always imagined this was what a telegram would look like. Short. Simple. Stop.

The typed message contained was exactly that.

_Baker St. Come at once if convenient._

_If inconvenient, come anyway._

_Could be dangerous._

John didn't know if he ought to laugh or cry. He settled for something in between, with a few pained gasps rounding out the mix. He couldn't know whether this was Sherlock or some hideously cruel prank. Still, had he ever told anyone what Sherlock had texted him that night, that first night? Mycroft Holmes probably knew; he knew nearly everything. But after all that had happened, would he do something like this? It would be incredibly evil even for a man known for his skills in manipulation.

What was John supposed to do? Go? Jump again for Sherlock Holmes? Not go? Prove he lied when he said he believed? Risk that he was refusing his friend? _His lover?_

_Jesus, and what the hell had that all been about? Was that how it was going to be if he went to Baker Street? If Sherlock was actually alive? Was that what John wanted? Would Sherlock Holmes mend him yet again? Or would he break him? _John had made his own life, finally pulling out of the hideous misery he'd felt when Sherlock fell. _Was Sig Sherlock's way of easing the shock, of testing the waters for his return? Of testing John's feelings for the detective?_

All John could really know was that none of his questions would be answered here. And if it was all a hoax, well, his heart had already shattered into a million pieces. It couldn't break any more. He went to put in a request with his mission head to leave as soon as a replacement could be assigned.

There was a taste of Mycroft in this after all. John's replacement had also arrived on the truck that day. He could leave the following morning. The head of the mission had also been told to inform John that a private plane would be waiting for him to take him directly back to London. He relayed this with a worried sort of awe, as if not sure whether good old John was up to something nefarious, or if he was being summoned home for a (wealthy) family emergency.

John kept it to himself and simply nodded in his military standard fashion and by the next evening, he was on a London-bound private jet.

London was loud and unfamiliar after two and a half years outposted in the far, violent reaches of the Earth. Everything moved so fast and was so crowded; John could barely comprehend the vast amount of life pressing in on him. He had missed this. When he'd chosen his school so long ago, he'd picked London for the never-ending rush. When he was discharged from the army, he'd wanted to stay in London for this reason, though it would have been much cheaper for him in some cozy hamlet somewhere.

He wondered if this was how Sherlock felt all of the time. He saw so much; every second his brain processed more than John's could in ten minutes. If he was constantly overwhelmed like this, it might explain a few things about the man.

John realized he was talking to himself as if Sherlock was still alive, as if it was a certainty and not just a calculated message mailed to him in an envelope for who knows what purpose. As if it were not some crazy grief fantasy John had twisted in his mind coupled with a steamy night with a stranger.

But John was a betting man, and he'd laid his wager on that slip of paper. And that was how, nearly three years after Sherlock's fall, he was standing on the doorstep of 221B Baker Street, finger on the bell.

"John, dear, what a surprise! It's been ages!" Mrs. Hudson opened the door and wrapped John in arms just a little more frail than they used to be. She still smelled the same, though, like baking and tea roses. "Come in for a spot of tea." She ushered him in and closed the door firmly behind. John dropped his duffle bag in the foyer. "Now, you go straight up," she said in a wholly different voice, one full of intrigue and secrecy. "He's expecting you."

Her final words made John's heart jump around in his chest as if it was a bird trying to escape a cage.

"Go on, dear, it's alright." Mrs. Hudson patted his arm.

John took the stairs two at a time. If he was out of breath by the seventeenth step, it was hardly due to the exertion of a simple staircase. If he opened the door with such force that it slammed into the wall and left a mark, that was only because he was wound to the point of desperation. And if he crumpled to the floor for a minute when he saw that familiar form sitting in a familiar chair, plucking strings on a very familiar violin, well, John could be excused for fainting; he'd had a very long day.

The pale, thin face surrounded by short, uncontrollable hair hovered over John's when he opened his eyes.

"I do hope you did not contract some horrible disease in whatever third world clinic you've been working at these past years." The pompous tone, that wonderful, egotistical voice, held only a small hint of concern but it was enough. "Honestly, John, if I suspected you would faint, I would have laid out pillows. Now do try to sit in a chair like a civilized person."

Sherlock lent his arm to help John rise and get to his armchair.

"Is everything all right up there? I heard a thump!"

"It's fine, Mrs. Hudson. John fainted but he's alright, now," Sherlock called down the stairs before shutting the lounge door. He opened it again briefly to call down, "I do think he could use a cup of tea."

"Not your housekeeper," came the familiar refrain.

"I expect she'll be up shortly despite that." Sherlock gave John a small, awkward smile, settling across from him in his black leather chair.

John's head ached as he gazed at Sherlock Holmes, alive and in the flesh seated not three feet from him. He hoped that Mrs. Hudson braved the stairs with her dodgy hip because if ever he could use a cup of tea, it was this very minute.

"You're very quiet, John. Did you knock your head when you fell?" Sherlock stood enough so that he could lean towards John and examine the back of his skull with those long, thin fingers. Fingers that John dreamed about; fingers that had touched him so intimately just the once before disappearing again.

"Do you need a blanket?"

The best John could do was look quizzical. Sherlock smiled and fetched an orange shock blanket from the sofa.

_I have to be hallucinating. Where would he even have gotten that? What did I do with that when I packed up his things? I hadn't kept it._

John could only stare and Sherlock's smile faltered. He knelt before John and took his wrist in his hand, peering into John's eyes to judge the dilation of his pupils.

"John, please, say something. Anything."

"I don't know what to say," John managed finally. His throat felt wrapped with wire and he practically had to choke out the words. "And I can't decide whether to punch you or shag you into the floor."

"Oh, do try to hold off on both, for my sake!" Mrs. Hudson chose that moment to enter the flat with a tea tray. Sherlock retreated into his chair, holding the shock blanket in his lap as if he couldn't quite decide if he needed it himself. Mrs. Hudson poured out the tea for John, balancing the cup and saucer on the arm of his chair. She left the pot for Sherlock.

"Now, do try and remember, he's had quite a shock. Perhaps you'd better explain a few things while you can, before the shouting begins."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock said firmly, more a dismissal than proper gratitude.

"I'll be off to Mrs. Turner's if you need anything," she said as she closed the door to the stairs behind her. They could faintly hear her add, "Two bedrooms, indeed," as her footsteps descended the stairs.


End file.
